Friday, February 18, 2011
Burn Baby Burn!
Finally tried the Pyromancer, a WoW Fire Mage equivalent, and really enjoy the AoE spell "Fire Storm". These shots really don't do it justice.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Home/World latency in Patch 4.0.6
Originally Posted by BrianI (Source)
We have been seeing a lot of confusion regarding some of our recent changes to the User Interface, specifically in regard to the new in-game latency meters. With 4.0.6, we have split the two separate connections the client forms to our game servers into two different ratings, labeled 'Home' and 'World'.
The speculation regarding what these ratings mean has been very interesting and some of the guesses as to what the numbers actually refer to have been pretty imaginative. Some have speculated that 'Home' referred to your personal latency and 'World' was Blizzard's latency. This is incorrect.
In essence, 'Home' refers to your connection to your realm server. This connection sends chat data, auction house stuff, guild chat and info, some addon data, and various other data. It is a pretty slim connection in terms of bandwidth requirements.
'World' is a reference to the connection to our servers that transmits all the other data... combat, data from the people around you (specs, gear, enchants, etc.), NPCs, mobs, casting, professions, etc. Going into a highly populated zone (like a capital city) will drastically increase the amount of data being sent over this connection and will raise the reported latency.
Prior to 4.0.6, the in-game latency monitor only showed 'World' latency, which caused a lot of confusion for people who had no lag while chatting, but couldn't cast or interact with NPCs and ended up getting kicked offline. We hoped that including the latency meters for both connections would assist in clarifying this for everyone.
As is probably obvious based upon this information, the two connections are not used equally. There is a much larger amount of data being sent over the World connection, which is a good reason you may see disparities between the two times. If there is a large chunk of data 'queued' up on the server and waiting to be sent to your client, that 'ping' to the server is going to have to wait its turn in line, and the actual number returned will be much higher than the 'Home' connection.
"Well, great," you may say, "but what does that mean to me?!"
Not much, maybe, but I wanted to focus on how local (or network) factors can (and will!) affect these numbers.
Here are the most common causes of high pings/latency (on both Home and World):
*As of July 2010, the 'official' definition of Broadband Internet (per the FCC) is '4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream'. Anything lower than this is not 'officially' broadband.
Lowering video settings (especially view distance) has the added benefit of lowering the amount of data your connection is asked to convey, as well, so even that can be a valid troubleshooting step.
If your 'Home' connection latency is low and your 'World' connection latency is high, that frequently indicates that there is some sort of QoS congestion controls being applied to your internet connection, at either the micro (LAN) or macro (WAN) level. A common symptom would be that you would be able to chat, but not to cast.
If both connections report high latency, that means your connection to our servers, in general, is almost completely saturated, or 'overflowing'. Without making any claims where that saturation lies, that seems to have been the most common case to date.
Please refer to our support pages (such as Is your in-game latency meter showing up red? (PC)) or contact a technical support representative directly for further information and troubleshooting.
The same Blue poster also covered some Patch 4.0.6 Latency Changes
We have been seeing a lot of confusion regarding some of our recent changes to the User Interface, specifically in regard to the new in-game latency meters. With 4.0.6, we have split the two separate connections the client forms to our game servers into two different ratings, labeled 'Home' and 'World'.
The speculation regarding what these ratings mean has been very interesting and some of the guesses as to what the numbers actually refer to have been pretty imaginative. Some have speculated that 'Home' referred to your personal latency and 'World' was Blizzard's latency. This is incorrect.
In essence, 'Home' refers to your connection to your realm server. This connection sends chat data, auction house stuff, guild chat and info, some addon data, and various other data. It is a pretty slim connection in terms of bandwidth requirements.
'World' is a reference to the connection to our servers that transmits all the other data... combat, data from the people around you (specs, gear, enchants, etc.), NPCs, mobs, casting, professions, etc. Going into a highly populated zone (like a capital city) will drastically increase the amount of data being sent over this connection and will raise the reported latency.
Prior to 4.0.6, the in-game latency monitor only showed 'World' latency, which caused a lot of confusion for people who had no lag while chatting, but couldn't cast or interact with NPCs and ended up getting kicked offline. We hoped that including the latency meters for both connections would assist in clarifying this for everyone.
As is probably obvious based upon this information, the two connections are not used equally. There is a much larger amount of data being sent over the World connection, which is a good reason you may see disparities between the two times. If there is a large chunk of data 'queued' up on the server and waiting to be sent to your client, that 'ping' to the server is going to have to wait its turn in line, and the actual number returned will be much higher than the 'Home' connection.
"Well, great," you may say, "but what does that mean to me?!"
Not much, maybe, but I wanted to focus on how local (or network) factors can (and will!) affect these numbers.
Here are the most common causes of high pings/latency (on both Home and World):
- Wireless
- Packet loss
- Almost-but-not-quite-broadband*
- Addons (yes, those wonderful UI modifications)
- Firewalls (some firewalls do interesting things to latency... try playing without it to see if it helps!)
- Mis-configured or defective home routers (please temporarily bypass before anything else)
- Quality of Service and Traffic Management Systems performing packet queuing of some sort.
- Net link saturation (not necessarily your ISP, but somewhere between you and Blizzard)
*As of July 2010, the 'official' definition of Broadband Internet (per the FCC) is '4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream'. Anything lower than this is not 'officially' broadband.
Lowering video settings (especially view distance) has the added benefit of lowering the amount of data your connection is asked to convey, as well, so even that can be a valid troubleshooting step.
If your 'Home' connection latency is low and your 'World' connection latency is high, that frequently indicates that there is some sort of QoS congestion controls being applied to your internet connection, at either the micro (LAN) or macro (WAN) level. A common symptom would be that you would be able to chat, but not to cast.
If both connections report high latency, that means your connection to our servers, in general, is almost completely saturated, or 'overflowing'. Without making any claims where that saturation lies, that seems to have been the most common case to date.
Please refer to our support pages (such as Is your in-game latency meter showing up red? (PC)) or contact a technical support representative directly for further information and troubleshooting.
The same Blue poster also covered some Patch 4.0.6 Latency Changes
Friday, February 4, 2011
RIFT Beta 6
Finally got the invite tonight and downloading 169.2mb of patch data. Going to take some time in the forums, do a little research. Came across a fun Soul Selection Flowchart while reading a good summary of the Chloromancer....
Arieste
Chloro is a main healer with massive tank healing capabilities, decent group healing capabilities and good raid healing capabilities. Our weakness is healing multiple tanks simultaneously.
The limitation the Cab speaks of about our heals being on cooldown comes from misunderstanding the class. The direct (instacast) heals are meant to be our emergency heals, not primary means of healing.
The choloromancer's primary means of healing is through the combination of lifegiving veil - which converts all our damage spells to heals - and Synthesis which vastly increases our heals on the tank. The main heals of the class are the spells Vile Spores which can be chaincast with no cooldown and nature's touch which can be rotated with 1 cast of Vile Spores in between. My highest heal with Nature's Touch was a 1200 pt heal at level 26, which is pretty massive.
At later levels we also gain some extremely powerful abilities such as an instacast complete heal, which i believe is the only one in the game. Additionally, since our heals are based on damage spells, they benefit from Spell Power stat that increases them, this makes us unique among healers as there is no such stat for cleric (or any direct) heals.
One of the major concerns for the future is whether our damage spell will begin to get resisted, making it more dangerous to heal at high level. At this point no one that knows can talk about it. Up through level 27 this was not an issue.
Chloromancer's main synergies come from one of four other souls:
Warlock: Mana regen and increases to magnitude of spells (this soul makes our heals bigger).
Archon: Mana regen, wards, casting speed increase, buffs, debuffs (this soul gives us additional tools for keeping the group up and increases overall cast speed)
Dominator: Mainly CC and some debuffs (better for pvp i'm told, but great at0pt 3rd soul for pve)
Stormcaller: This soul gives us groupwide power regen, otherwise this isn't really a great choice.
Necromancer: Extra HoT and an additional free-target heal.
For soloing, using an Elementalist or Necromancer is also extremely useful for the pet.
Contrary to what Mucro said, i think that healing ourselves is weaker for a chloro than any other healing class as the ability that creates our most powerful heals - synthesis - cannot be used on self, making our biggest heals not castable on self.
Arieste
Chloro is a main healer with massive tank healing capabilities, decent group healing capabilities and good raid healing capabilities. Our weakness is healing multiple tanks simultaneously.
The limitation the Cab speaks of about our heals being on cooldown comes from misunderstanding the class. The direct (instacast) heals are meant to be our emergency heals, not primary means of healing.
The choloromancer's primary means of healing is through the combination of lifegiving veil - which converts all our damage spells to heals - and Synthesis which vastly increases our heals on the tank. The main heals of the class are the spells Vile Spores which can be chaincast with no cooldown and nature's touch which can be rotated with 1 cast of Vile Spores in between. My highest heal with Nature's Touch was a 1200 pt heal at level 26, which is pretty massive.
At later levels we also gain some extremely powerful abilities such as an instacast complete heal, which i believe is the only one in the game. Additionally, since our heals are based on damage spells, they benefit from Spell Power stat that increases them, this makes us unique among healers as there is no such stat for cleric (or any direct) heals.
One of the major concerns for the future is whether our damage spell will begin to get resisted, making it more dangerous to heal at high level. At this point no one that knows can talk about it. Up through level 27 this was not an issue.
Chloromancer's main synergies come from one of four other souls:
Warlock: Mana regen and increases to magnitude of spells (this soul makes our heals bigger).
Archon: Mana regen, wards, casting speed increase, buffs, debuffs (this soul gives us additional tools for keeping the group up and increases overall cast speed)
Dominator: Mainly CC and some debuffs (better for pvp i'm told, but great at0pt 3rd soul for pve)
Stormcaller: This soul gives us groupwide power regen, otherwise this isn't really a great choice.
Necromancer: Extra HoT and an additional free-target heal.
For soloing, using an Elementalist or Necromancer is also extremely useful for the pet.
Contrary to what Mucro said, i think that healing ourselves is weaker for a chloro than any other healing class as the ability that creates our most powerful heals - synthesis - cannot be used on self, making our biggest heals not castable on self.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Does Not Shut Up
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Sing, Damn You!
Finally went up to grab my Singing Sunflower, with many thanks to a guide on MMO-Champion. A complete list of their recent winning guides is here.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
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